Suns Turn up the Defense in the 4th, Beat Shorthanded Bobcats, 95-89

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioI1EhSc9fQ

They call him The Flyswatter.

I woke up and had to shovel 8 inches of snow out of my driveway. Due to that snow, all the basketball games were canceled which meant I missed out on $90 I otherwise would have made. Then Creighton lost on a buzzer-beating 3. Then I found out I drove over a nail and my tire was flat, so I had to put on my donut. If the Suns had lost, I might have just given up and not even bothered getting out of bed tomorrow.

12 rebounds. Thanks, I corrected it.

I think that’s what you are referring to.

League Pass Broadband has managed to archive EVER SINGLE game in about 1.5 hrs since a game completed…but nope…not when it’s a SUNS game. Been nearly 2.5 hours and it’s still archiving.

Charlotte, New Orleans, and some more eastern teams have locked down the tanking process. We can’t outsuck them

forever.

Don’t discount the fact that the Suns played the night before in Houston (which isn’t exactly close) and were playing the fourth game in six days…

They played hard. They won. In this case, that’s all that matters.

Also, Redd showed up and played better as a starter. Gentry said after the game that with the older guys it’s harder coming off the bench than it is for them to warmup before the game or at the half and then play a long stretch. Hill does better starting then as a reserve. I suspect he’ll continue to try and start Redd…we’ll see.

And Robin earned his way back into the rotation by staying positive after getting benched and playing hard in his garbage time minutes. This team is much better when he’s playing well then when Warrick is getting those minutes.

Those were the two takeaways that could carry forward

Who knew?

Yes…I’m guessing Sarver doesn’t understand that fans want to win. It’s a tough concept.

I hope we do – especially Redd and Lopez.

redd would be a nice 12-15 pt 6th man 2 guard
Price would be our D minded PG just in case we cant sign anyone else.
Robin is 7’1 and had great value if we kept him to trade him later

Because of that very same dilemma.

If we win a game, awesome. I like watching us win.
If we lose a game, awesome. One loss closer to a great pick.

Win win for me.

The Suns next 9 games include 7 teams with better records than the Suns and the other 2 (GS and Sacramento) are on the road. A 2-7 or 3-6 showing will basically shatter playoff hopes prior to the all-star break. After the break, 24 of the Suns 32 games are against teams with winning records (the Western Conference is brutal).

If the Suns can’t consistently bring improved play, the cheering interest for the playoff hopeful will disintegrate. If the Suns are 13-21, 6 games out of the playoffs, and in a dog fight for 12th place it will be interesting to see if and how the collective conscience shifts.

The “tanking” discussion is about degree of tanking in my opinion. It’s about how bad a team decides to blow it up in the rebuilding process. A team can’t create $30 million in cap space if they are fully invested in winning now. There’s definitely a dynamic of sacrificing short term success for the prospect of long term success already in play.

What we’re seeing now is that the Suns plan to remain competitive during the rebuilding process isn’t coming together as swimmingly as they would have hoped. I don’t see that as a catastrophe because I believe that the results of this season and the overall “future building” project can be discrete entities. Two years from now, I won’t be lambasting the front office for this season (if things continue to unravel) as long as they have better results at the rebuild.

Long term big picture (next year) -

Suns have possibility at retaining the best free agent point guard in the league (Nash)

Suns have 2 of their own young, talented draft picks on the roster (Morris, player X)

Suns sign multiple rotation/role players to make team more competitive next year

Suns maintain cap space to offer at least one max deal in summer of 2013

Suns have more assets to pursue trades next year than they have now

Something completely unexpected and wonderful happens (believe it or not, this has actually happened before – think Barkley, KJ, Nash, Amare, etc.)

I want to see the team get better. It’s much easier to keep what we have as opposed to FA signings and the draft. I know the grass is greener and all, but… If we’ve got Nash, Hill, Redd, Gortat, and Frye all playing well, individually and together as a team, that’s a pretty good team. If we have Dudley, Lopez, Morris, Chilly, Warrick, and both PG’s playing well individually and together, that’s a really good second team. With two trade chips. Add some cap room, and we could be really competitive.
I believe in options, and good options are better than bad options. We can’t control ping-pong balls, or what other teams do, we can only control what we do, and that should be trying as hard as we can, in all cases.

But far too often it seems like we play the night before and fly home to a team thats been sitting in phx waiting on us a day or two.

we had Robin Lopez and Michael Redd there to save us…

Rec.

But I have seen the clip many, many times since.

TC FTW

I really enjoyed those KJ/Chambers/Hornacek teams, pre-Barkley. That team would have driven the “championship or bust!” people nuts because they weren’t winning a title and I think everybody knew that. But they would win 50 games and be entertaining as hell.

I hated it when the Suns played there.

Bird’s first 9 years they were 321-48 at home.

Not in victory threads, please.